Vote Them Off the Island – (thought by Kirk Weisler)

The worst voice of the brand *is* the brand – by Seth Godin

We either ignore your brand or we judge it, usually with too little information. And when we judge it, we judge it based on the actions of the loudest, meanest, most selfish member of your tribe.

When a zealot advocates violence, outsiders see all members of his tribe as advocates of violence.

When a doctor rips off Medicare, all doctors are seen as less trustworthy.

When a fundamentalist advocates destruction of outsiders, all members of that organization are seen as intolerant.

When a soldier commits freelance violence, all citizens of his nation are seen as violent.

When a car rental franchise rips off a customer, all outlets of the franchise suffer.

Seems obvious, no? I wonder, then, why loyal and earnest members of the tribe hesitate to discipline, ostracize or expel the negative outliers.

“You’re hurting us, this is wrong, we are expelling you.”

What do you stand for?

I was doing some reading yesterday and came across this short bit of wisdom from Seth Godin.  It reminded me of all the leaders who have approached me over the years looking for insight on what they can do to handle an extremely negative or toxic member of their tribe.  Sometimes they feel their hands are tied by union or governmental issues…and maybe they are.  Most of the time though it seems that the leader is just hesitant to do what they know needs to be done.  And most of the time leaders wait far too long to take the needed action.

What if it wasn’t up to the leader?  What if it was like an episode of survivor where you had a weekly peer vote and the least contributing member (the one that was bringing down your brand ) was voted off!

When I was going through the 2 month long US Army Ranger training we did something like this every 2 weeks.  We had to identify the least contributing member of our team and pass the name to our instructor.  If the vast majority of the team turned in the same name then that person packed their bags and we never saw them again. (Unlike the TV show there was no follow up interview asking them if they felt betrayed or asking the team if we felt guilty about sending them packing).

There was no guilt, no hesitation and no regrets.  We never even discussed them again… who has time, energy or even the desire to talk about such things.  Weed out the whiners, porcupines and skunks and move on.  There is a mission to accomplish and I want accomplish it with the most elite bunch of super talented freaky tribal members we can gather to our cause.

Get em off the Island, get them away from our brand, so we can, without the baggage of their distraction, get on with the mission !

Kirk Out